The extraordinary duties of a combat soldier can never confide in the dialogue of even the most reputable citizens of that nation; indeed, it is reserved for the class of men and women who have decided to reach the highest transfiguration of human potential. However, in maniacal examples of sacrifice, there is a reserved place at the table of honor and bravery that only the most zenithal warriors of bravery can atone for. This story claims allegiance to such an example.

This is the clinquant saga of a group of men who were destined, tragically, to be honed as warrior’s elite. It was their mission as well as their coronation with fate that would entice the tragic but honorable outcome that reigns in the hearts of their partisans and readers of this venerable prose of eulogy. This is one of the most harrowing accounts one will ever read of combat survival. None of the accosted ingredients have been spared by Marcus Luttrell. From the infancy of the tenacity of BUDS and Hell Week Navy Seal training to the deportation of their mission into the phantasmagorical mountains in Afghanistan, Mr. Luttrell gives us an exciting and often bleak portrayal of the life of a Navy Seal. He expresses no hesitation in demonstrating just how arduous and dangerous it is being one of America’s elite warriors. Like the ancient Spartans, Seals prepare and EXPECT the worst from their enemies. One of the most compelling episodes in the book is how fast their battle for survival escalates; indeed, the reader has no time to prepare himself. You are cast right into the brutal scenery and sprays of bullets as best as words can permit. It is not, however, difficult to wonder just how sagacious and merciless Mr. Luttrell and his Seal Team’s circumstances had swollen. After inhuman hammerings of violence and exposure to vile combat, there is a slight pause to gather will and spirit to pursue victory.

Tragically, albeit heroically, Mr. Luttrell’s teammates give up their lives for their country and for each other; the motto, “you are never out of the fight’, dangles in front of their mangled bodies but undying spirit. Faced with a desperate situation of survival, the sacred traditions and astute spirit of the Seal Teams remodels Marcus Luttrell into the Lone Survivor. It is impossible for the reader to comprehend what Mr. Luttrell was forced to experience or witness. One of the most captivating episodes of the book is Chapter 8 (I’m referring to the Kindle edition) where he writes with heart breaking prose about the loss of teammates and their exposures to an inclement death. Surrounded by fierce enemies and an unholy region, Mr. Luttrell is compelled by his odious circumstances to carry on, without the aid of a single person, crawl on his stomach to a safe zone, and continue to receive enemy fire on his truncated body.

In an instant, the horrid details of Operation Red Wings are darkened by the culmination of being outnumbered, violently assaulted by bullets and grenades, and forced to make a desperate call to command that would vaticinate into a cascade of self-sacrifice and bravery beyond superlatives and divine intervention. What began as a well-crafted and cleverly devised operation, turned into a maniacal and self-obsessed motivation of explosive survival. As the book ripens, Mr. Luttrell instructs us with a vigorous but mandatory lesson for all life.

Despite having his spirit wounded and his body disfigured, his crescive concern for his determined enemies to extinguish him, his martyred pain depriving him of walking, he is compelled to crawl on the ground, undetected to escape the advancement of the Taliban that is surrounding him. He never quits or gives up his life. Surrender and defeat are alien to his purpose. Having lost his teammates in the battle and forced to carry on the fight alone, pain becomes, as it has been suggested in this book, his only friend. It simply means that he is breathing and still alive; he takes full advantage of this as he continues to advance to a safer and less hospitable destination. 

The book then transcends into an odyssey of pain and obsession to stay alive. No options are offered to him; no one is there to comfort him. This is a lesson that we all can take from this reading. Pain, for Mr. Luttrell, is an avant-garde incomprehensible to the average person. His experiment, albeit an aleatory one, proves to be the deific ingredient to his survival. With fabulous determination and intensity, Mr. Luttrell recalibrates his personal vista and triumphs by an unprecedented margin. A fresh and new oracle of survival has emerged from this captivating narration that was preordained by himself and his fallen team. 

While it is reputable and expedient to commend Mr. Luttrell and his team for their unblemished acts of heroism and fortitude, this review has cultivated a concern of something that the author himself was emphatic over. 

During Mr. Luttrell’s deployment, and when the news of the Battle of Operation Red Wings had enunciated itself to the public, a rally of his townsfolk and friends constructed an inseparable bond with his family. It was replete with cookouts, family/community picnics, church announcements and even public gatherings on the private residence of his family ranch. This leaves a Renaissance impression on the reader that is friendly with suggestions. It is to be auspicious in consideration that this is the main achievement of the book itself. One cannot be fully moved with sensitivity and humaneness when the author, not once, but repeatedly demonstrates his gratitude and conviviality to his hometown community; it is just an inseparable part of the book as is his brutal combat episodes in the torrid mountains of Afghanistan. 

Frogman Marcus Luttrell’s book is loquacious with passages of honor, humility, sacrifice, loss, pain and the realization to achieve when circumstances and chance are improperly aligned with one’s romanticisms. While the book is a departure from the usual or accepted practice that most would accrue under the guise of this level of calamity, it speaks and demonstrates, loudly, the solutions to those injuries if one is open to the possibility of their clandestine and undeveloped potential and undying desire to prevail, irrespective of the preface that one has found himself in. Through luxurious and formidable prose, Marcus Luttrell has preserved the most sacred traditions of military service, and his family and community have authenticated and evinced, by collective example, the power of faith and community when the hands of time are draped with uncertainty and doom. Quit is never a word that enters himself, his family, or admirers. The reader is left with little to ponder other than persistence through defiance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2024, Mark Grago. All rights reserved.